Transferring Data

We offer four basic options for getting your existing customers' data into Gingr. In some cases, a hybrid approach can be taken. Each approach has pros and cons. We encourage you to be open-minded about each option in order to determine the best method for your business.

Online Self-Registration

If you’re planning to use the Customer Portal side of your Gingr app, you can have all of your customers register online. They can be invited to do as they visit your facility or via email or social-media. Some facilities choose to have a tablet or inexpensive laptop (like a Chromebook) in their lobby devoted customer self-registration.

Pros: It’s free. You get 100% up-to-date, accurate information about your customers and their pets. Start fresh with quality data that isn't overladen with deceased pets, inactive customers, and out-of-date contact information. This also ‘trains your customers to use their online portal-account - saving you staff time and money. Once your customers have established profiles, it is easy to enter future reservations, vaccination due dates, and existing credits. We've seen businesses have very happy results with this approach. Customers are often very enthusiastic about self-registering for a new system that provides all of the benefits Gingr does. Also, remember, it's free.

Cons: There are two downsides to this approach. 1) A fraction of your regular customers will not register immediately and you may have to remind/nurture them. You can do this easily with Gingr’s marketing feature! 2) You will be responsible for manually entering future reservations, credits and balances owed, pets vaccination due dates, and retail items. However, the amount of labor involved in this process is often less time consuming and tedious than properly cleaning up and formatting years of data for a data import.

Free Data Import

If you’re able to export data from your old software, and are able to format that data into our Data Import Template in Excel, we can then import that information into Gingr at no charge within 2 full business days. The Data Import Template includes:

Pros: As long as you have access to exporting your current data, this method avoids manually entering data into Gingr and it is a free service.

Cons: Most businesses do not realize how poor the quality of their existing customer data is, including outdated email addresses and phone numbers, deceased pets who are not properly labeled, and customers that haven't used your services in years. Having completed hundreds of data imports, we can assure you that this is a persistent problem and business owners are always surprised to find out how much outdated and inaccurate data ends up in their new system. We import whatever is given to us. We highly advise that your existing data is scoured with a fine-toothed comb prior to being given to us, in order to eliminate customers you haven't seen in years, deceased pets, and email addresses you're not sure about. This can be a time-consuming process. Furthermore, there is no such thing as a perfect data import / data migration. We're very good at it, having been through several iterations of the process, but there are innumerable differences between the ways different software systems store and label data, as well as how each businesses utilizes the various data-fields in their software. We cannot guarantee 100% accuracy.

Paid Data import

This options is identical to the Free Data Import, with the exception that we take your existing data and format it into the Data Import Template for you, for a non-refundable fee of $250, and the turnaround time is 4 business days instead of 2.This option comes with the same caveats of the Free Data Import option (please read those), in addition to the following factors to consider:

Pros: Formatting your data into our data import template can be time-consuming and challenging if you do not feel confident working with spreadsheets and more advanced features in Excel, such as VLOOKUP. With this option, we take care of formatting the data for you. (However, to ensure that only up-to-date information is imported, we strongly recommended that you clean up your data before delivering it to us.)

Cons: In addition to the cons stated in the Free Data Import option, this is the only option that costs money.

Manual Entry

If you are transitioning from a pen and paper system or only have a small amount of information to transfer, you may choose to manually enter this directly into Gingr.

Pros: This option gives you full control over how data is entered into your system.

Cons: Manual entry of data can be time-consuming and is always prone to some human error.

Hybrid approach

In some cases, a hybrid approach can be taken. For example, you may want to have customers self-register, but have us import your retail items and list of lodgings (kennels/pens/suites...). Fees will be assessed for imports of retail items and lodgings if you require us to format the data into our data import template.

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